酷我-北美枫

[Champagne]

We are Virginia Tech (Convocation Poem by Nikki Giovanni)

The following is a convocation poem entitled We are Virginia Tech, which was delivered by Nikki Giovanni on April 17, 2007 (Via Transcript of Nikki Giovanni's Convocation address):


We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.


Watch Nikki Giovanni Recite her poem at the Virginia Tech Memorial Convocation



Notes:


1 Nikki Giovanni is an award-winning American poet and activist, and she is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech. She once taught the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho in a poetry class and was offended by his “mean” behavior. On April 17, 2007, at the Virginia Tech Convocation commemorating the April 16 Virginia Tech massacre, she closed the ceremony with her poem, We are Virginia Tech.

After she finished reading her poem, the auditorium rose to its feet to applaud her, to applaud Virginia Tech, and the room was filled with "Let's Go, Hokies."

At that moment, a poet's words really opened the minds, bound the wounds and soothed the hearts.

As a lung cancer survivor, Giovanni’s poetry offers a guiding insight into human suffering, illness, and grief.

This poem is now the closing work in her new book entitled Bicycles.

2 Virginia Tech sponsors 18 sports and competes at the NCAA Division I level. Its sports teams are called the Hokies.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[[Champagne]]

We are Virginia Tech (Convocation Poem by Nikki Giovanni)

The following is a convocation poem entitled We are Virginia Tech, which was delivered by Nikki Giovanni on April 17, 2007 (Via Transcript of Nikki Giovanni's Convocation address):


We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.


Watch Nikki Giovanni Recite her poem at the Virginia Tech Memorial Convocation



Notes:


1 Nikki Giovanni is an award-winning American poet and activist, and she is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech. She once taught the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho in a poetry class and was offended by his “mean” behavior. On April 17, 2007, at the Virginia Tech Convocation commemorating the April 16 Virginia Tech massacre, she closed the ceremony with her poem, We are Virginia Tech.

After she finished reading her poem, the auditorium rose to its feet to applaud her, to applaud Virginia Tech, and the room was filled with "Let's Go, Hokies."

At that moment, a poet's words really opened the minds, bound the wounds and soothed the hearts.

As a lung cancer survivor, Giovanni’s poetry offers a guiding insight into human suffering, illness, and grief.

This poem is now the closing work in her new book entitled Bicycles.

2 Virginia Tech sponsors 18 sports and competes at the NCAA Division I level. Its sports teams are called the Hokies.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[Champagne]

Below is an excerpt from Bill Moyers’ interview with Nikki Giovanni:

BILL MOYERS: What do words do for grief? The sadness you sometimes feel, the grief you felt after Virginia Tech's massacre. What do they do?

NIKKI GIOVANNI: I guess they let us know that we're not alone. I think what words do is we acknowledge that we're human and we hurt. And so you don't have to pretend you're not hurting. Because you have a hole in your heart. Poems, I mean, go back to 9-11-01 here in the States. People were posting poems all over the internet, because they were trying to find a way to connect. To say, "This hurts, but we're not alone. Someone else is sharing this pain." And this thing that happened at Virginia Tech, it was an incredibly sad time for us. And I think that the only thing that I could do to make sense out of it was to connect these dots. And the only thing to connect the dots was going to be love. Because, no matter what else is wrong with you, good wine and good s e x will make you feel better. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that.

BILL MOYERS: You are, you most certainly are.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: Yeah. But, you know, 65 year-old women are not finished. It was great. And I just thought, you know, I've got to rethink it, and then I've got to find an object.

BILL MOYERS: But the object you chose was bicycles. Why bicycles? And what do they have to do with tragedy and drama and loss and death even?

NIKKI GIOVANNI: Well, tragedy and trauma are wheels. And they're always with us, aren't they? They're always spinning around. That's the perimeters of life, of these tragedies. They just spin around and spin around. And so what you're trying to do is bring them together. And when you bring them together you've got the bar, right? So you have a vehicle, right? Well, when I grew up, you learned to ride a bicycle by getting on a bicycle. Which means you're going to fall off. And love and life and bicycles are about trust and balance. It's about riding it and believing that this thing that doesn't make sense for you to be on, can move. And we see it here. This is such a great city, I love Manhattan. And I miss it in my dreams sometimes. But when we see the messengers on that bike, that's just trust and balance. They just say, "I'm coming at it. I don't care if the cars are going to swerve, I'm-" It's beautiful watching them on their bicycles. But we do that in our relationships. It's the same bike. We are continuing relationships through trust and balance.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[[Champagne]]

Below is an excerpt from Bill Moyers’ interview with Nikki Giovanni:

BILL MOYERS: What do words do for grief? The sadness you sometimes feel, the grief you felt after Virginia Tech's massacre. What do they do?

NIKKI GIOVANNI: I guess they let us know that we're not alone. I think what words do is we acknowledge that we're human and we hurt. And so you don't have to pretend you're not hurting. Because you have a hole in your heart. Poems, I mean, go back to 9-11-01 here in the States. People were posting poems all over the internet, because they were trying to find a way to connect. To say, "This hurts, but we're not alone. Someone else is sharing this pain." And this thing that happened at Virginia Tech, it was an incredibly sad time for us. And I think that the only thing that I could do to make sense out of it was to connect these dots. And the only thing to connect the dots was going to be love. Because, no matter what else is wrong with you, good wine and good s e x will make you feel better. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that.

BILL MOYERS: You are, you most certainly are.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: Yeah. But, you know, 65 year-old women are not finished. It was great. And I just thought, you know, I've got to rethink it, and then I've got to find an object.

BILL MOYERS: But the object you chose was bicycles. Why bicycles? And what do they have to do with tragedy and drama and loss and death even?

NIKKI GIOVANNI: Well, tragedy and trauma are wheels. And they're always with us, aren't they? They're always spinning around. That's the perimeters of life, of these tragedies. They just spin around and spin around. And so what you're trying to do is bring them together. And when you bring them together you've got the bar, right? So you have a vehicle, right? Well, when I grew up, you learned to ride a bicycle by getting on a bicycle. Which means you're going to fall off. And love and life and bicycles are about trust and balance. It's about riding it and believing that this thing that doesn't make sense for you to be on, can move. And we see it here. This is such a great city, I love Manhattan. And I miss it in my dreams sometimes. But when we see the messengers on that bike, that's just trust and balance. They just say, "I'm coming at it. I don't care if the cars are going to swerve, I'm-" It's beautiful watching them on their bicycles. But we do that in our relationships. It's the same bike. We are continuing relationships through trust and balance.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[christine]

I like the way she employed the repetition of "We are Virginia Tech," which brings emotional weight to the poem.

[[christine]]

I like the way she employed the repetition of "We are Virginia Tech," which brings emotional weight to the poem.

[Champagne]

[[Champagne]]

[川生]

[[川生]]

[Champagne]

[[Champagne]]